


Your Dreams A Trapeze

by coffeeandchocolate



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23352979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeandchocolate/pseuds/coffeeandchocolate
Summary: Gotham City is not a city that has much appreciation for circuses.Bruce Wayne attends a performance.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 15
Kudos: 70





	Your Dreams A Trapeze

Gotham City is not a city that has much appreciation for circuses. Indeed, unlike the residents of most cities, Gothamites have an entire list of reasons why they’d rather most circuses just move on. One of Gotham City’s most famous citizens, Bruce Wayne, is even more averse to circuses than most others that call the same city home, due to the fact that he is both old enough and unlucky enough to have been present for and directly involved with most of the items on that list of reasons. Because of this, he manages to be as opposed to the one circus that most Gothamites tend to view as an exception to the rule _circuses are terrible_ as he is to all others.

When Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce’s butler and former guardian, hands Bruce a pair of tickets to Haly’s Circus, Bruce’s response is simple, so much so that one would be forgiven for the false assumption that he’s less prone to dramatics than the rest of the citizens of the city he calls home: “No.”

Alfred rolls his eyes. “Really, now, I thought I’d finally managed to convince you of the need to do something _other_ than spend your God given flare for the dramatic on prowling the streets at night like some teenage yob?”

“No,” Bruce repeats. “Don’t you remember the _last_ time I went to a circus?”

Alfred raises an eyebrow at him. “Go on, then, refresh my memory, as you clearly want to.”

It’s obviously sarcastic. Bruce answers anyway. “I punched a man’s stapled on _face_ half _off._ Nothing good comes from circuses.”

“That wasn’t a circus, it was a fair. Completely different.”

“No, it’s not,” Bruce grumbles. “Not when the place was literally called the Boardwalk Circus. _Jerome_ was from the circus, that’s why we were there at all. Not to mention Jeremiah.”

“Yeah, well, there’s no reason to take that out on _this_ circus, is there?” Alfred says briskly. “Captain Gordon recommended it. He’s acquainted with the trapeze artists, says they’re excellent.”

“John and Mary Grayson, I know,” Bruce agrees. He scowls. “They came from the _same circus Jerome and Jeremiah did._ ”

“Steady on, Master Bruce. I’m sure that tonight’s show will go off without a hitch. And if not…wouldn’t you rather be there than anywhere else?”

* * *

There are few people on the planet that don’t like to be proven right. Bruce Wayne likes it more than most. But tonight, it won’t even occur to him to feel any sense of vindication when everything goes wrong.

The show starts off well. More than well – even though Selina didn’t show up to claim her ticket and he ended up sitting by himself, away from everything he has to do without any reason to be there, the show is spectacular. The adults are excellent; their son pure poetry in motion. As they soar through the air, Bruce can forget the empty seat next to him, that he hadn’t wanted to come in the first place, all those things that had needed his attention. What he can’t do is tear his eyes away or refrain from grinning.

He’s spent years seeking out the most skilled people in the world and learning from them. He’s learned to fight and he’s learned to sew wounds, how to pick locks and navigate blindfolded. But _this…_ this exceeds his skillset.

 _Maybe,_ he muses to himself, _I should join a circus._

He continues to watch the show, entranced by the movement, the whirls of colour. Selina would have loved this, and it’s a testament to the performance that Bruce doesn’t turn to look for her. It’s a good thing, too – things go wrong so fast that if he’d looked away for even a second, he might have missed the moment the world shifts forever.

But he doesn’t look away.

When the wires snap, Bruce is on his feet in an instant.

The wires snap.

The boy screams.

The performers fall.

The boy keeps screaming, and the crowd joins him, and Bruce is out of his seat and running before he’s even fully registered what’s happened.

The noise fades into something distant as he runs, a quiet roar in his ears, nothing worth any attention. Bruce doesn’t think. He just _moves._

He must get to the boy first, because he finds him alone, not far from the pavilion. The other performers were probably distracted by the parents for long enough for the child to make his escape. The boy – Richard, according to the program that Bruce is suddenly exceedingly grateful that he glanced at – is on the ground and curled in on himself, hugging his knees and rocking back and forth, all but hyperventilating. Bruce crouches beside him, leaning forward to get into his line of sight. “Richard, can you look at me?”

Fifteen years dedicated to never feeling helpless again, and here he is, on the ground, desperately searching for what he knows doesn’t exist for someone he doesn’t know but does. For possibly the first time in his life, he understands what it must have been like to be Alfred or Gordon, all those years ago.

“Breathe,” Bruce tells the boy, placing a hesitant hand on his narrow back, and if his voice is a little hoarse, the child certainly isn’t in a state to notice. “In and out. Good.”

Richard isn’t quite crying. He’s gasping for air, face drained of all colour, and his entire body shakes, but there are no tears to be seen. Shock, perhaps. That night – scorched into his memory forever – Bruce had cried. He’d been crying when Gordon had arrived. How long had he sat there alone? When had the tears begun to fall? He has no idea. All he had known was the gunshots, the blood, his scream.

“I – they –” the boy stammers, but he cuts himself off. Goes back to gulping in huge breaths that Bruce just _knows_ don’t feel like enough.

Bruce doesn’t tell him it’s all right, that everything is okay. He knows better than anyone that that would be a lie. Instead, he says, “You’re doing well. Keep breathing.”

The boy does just that. It takes him a while, but his breathing begins to even out. Even as he stops hyperventilating, though, he keeps shaking. He’s still clad only in his performance unitard and the night is getting chilly – perhaps it’s not just the shock. Maybe he’s recovered enough to start registering the cold.

Bruce shrugs off his coat and drapes it over Richard’s shoulders. The boy mumbles something that could be a _thank you_ or could just be another sob. Bruce doesn’t know.

“I’m Bruce,” he says softly.

“Dick,” the kid replies. “Dick Grayson.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Bruce says. The boy doesn’t reply in kind. Bruce supposes he ought to have predicted that. Nothing about this is _nice._

They remain there for a while, not saying anything, and just when the silence has started to settle, Dick bursts out, “They _always_ check the ropes!”

Bruce tilts his head to the side. His eyes narrow. “Is that so?”

Dick nods vigorously. “They did it this morning. But then I came by the tent a few hours ago…and there was – a man, and they – he and Mr. Haly – they were arguing, and…”

An eerie calm settles over him. It’s an odd feeling, to instantly know what someone is going to say before they say it – not the jolt of a realization or the process of any thought, just the settling of knowledge so natural, it was as if it had always been there, just waiting to be noticed. It’s as if he’s seeing through someone else’s eyes, hearing through their ears. Someone else breathes for him and the inhaled air goes to someone else’s lungs. Nothing feels quite real. Nothing, save for the boy sitting on the ground and the words Bruce knows are coming.

“ _It wasn’t an accident!_ ”

“I believe you,” Bruce says. Gotham isn’t as it was, but he knows better than anyone that that doesn’t mean it’s become a safe place. It will be, one day, but today…it’s hard to doubt the boy’s words when there are similar stories, day after day. “Whoever is responsible _will_ be brought to justice.”

It’s a dangerous promise.

Gotham is better now, perhaps, than it used to be. But better is not perfect, may even not be good. And justice is often in short supply.

Bruce hesitates, then says, “I lost my parents, too.”

Dick does not react to that. Bruce supposes that’s only natural.

The Wayne murders shocked the city. But many years have passed since that night in the alley, and the world turned upside down over and over, until _normal_ for Gothamites meant costumes and powers and dead men walking. What were two murders, brutal in their simplicity, next to that? Now the norm has settled to something more like what it was before the world went mad. Teenagers live that weren’t yet born when two shots rang out in the night. And, even in Gotham, Thomas and Martha Wayne have all but been forgotten.

Richard Grayson is not yet ten. He is not a Gothamite. The name Wayne means nothing to him, and Bruce’s own even less. There’s no telling what ideas Bruce’s words have stirred in him, but they’re certainly not what happened in truth.

“They were murdered,” Bruce says. Dick actually makes eye contact at that.

“Really?”

Bruce nods once. Dick hesitates, then asks, “And…the person who did it?

“Found,” Bruce said. It’s not enough, not nearly enough. _Found_ is a word, not an explanation, and if Bruce had been given that answer when he’d asked similar questions, it wouldn’t have satisfied, wouldn’t have gotten to the root of all those many things he’d wanted to know but hadn’t known how to ask. He hadn’t known how to ask. And now he doesn’t know how to answer. Instead, he adds, “Captain Gordon, with the GCPD, worked the case. He’s a friend of mine. He once knew your parents.”

“Really?” Dick says again, and it’s with a puzzled frown this time. “How?”

Before he can answer, a familiar voice, growing closer with every word, calls, “Why don’t you let me answer that, Bruce?”

Bruce is standing half in front of Dick in an instant, tensed defensively. Jim lifts his eyebrows.

“Jim,” Bruce says. His gaze flickers back to Dick. Jim’s eyes follow the movement and remain there, even as Bruce looks back at him. Bruce grits his teeth and forces himself to relax. “Hey.”

He’s glad the man’s here – had he not been, Bruce probably would have called him. Still, it’s odd, so as besides the point it is, Bruce asks, “What are you doing here?”

“I was watching the show,” Jim says, eyes still fixed on the kid. “John and Mary sent me a ticket, said they’d thought I’d like to see a show not interrupted by a brawl.”

“What happened?”

Jim shakes his head. “Don’t know yet. The performers are all being questioned now.”

Dick’s shoulders hunch inwards. Bruce glances back at him, then steps closer to Jim, lowering his voice even further. “What’s going to happen to him?”

Jim sighs. He tears his gaze away from Dick to look up at Bruce. “I don’t know. It depends on what comes out of the investigation. He won’t be allowed to stay here, that’s for sure. Not after this.”

“No instructions from the parents? Other relatives?”

Jim’s frown only deepens, and he pinches the bridge of his nose as if to ward off an incoming headache. “They left a will indicating Haly should be his guardian if anything happened to them, but after this, I don’t think there’s a court in the world that would approve. I know John and Mary had relatives, back in their old circus, but Haly doesn’t have any contact information, and that was fifteen years ago, anyway – for all I know, they’re dead, too. We’re probably going to have to find him a bed for a few nights until we can locate a family member.”

Apparently, Dick has the ears of a bat, because he’s on his feet and glaring up at Jim from Bruce’s side in an instant.

“The circus _is_ my family,” he snaps. Bruce glances down at him. The boy’s jaw is clenched tight, tiny face alight with fury. “I’m not leaving!”

“The circus may not be allowed to continue operating,” Jim says. It’s gentle, but Dick rocks back onto his heels like he’s been struck.

“But…” he says, and his voice is painfully young. “What about…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, and Bruce’s brain supplies a dozen possible endings in the span of seconds: _the animals, the performers, me._ Bruce has no idea what to say to any of that. Jim does.

“It’ll be okay, Dick. We’ll figure this out.”

It’s weak. Bruce can tell from Jim’s wince that the captain knows it, too. But it doesn’t seem to matter – Dick’s shoulders slump and he staggers back a step, some of the fight knocked out of him for now.

“Give us a minute, please, Dick,” Bruce says, and, catching Jim’s eye, gestures with his head. Jim follows him a few steps. They don’t go far, just far enough to get the illusion of privacy while still being able to keep an eye on Dick. Jim raises an eyebrow.

“I’ll look into it for you,” Bruce says. “The family. I met a lot of people when I was travelling. Some of them are very good at tracking people down. They can have an answer for you within a few days.”

Jim nods. “I’d appreciate that. And until then…”

“He can stay with me,” Bruce blurts out before he can think about it, or maybe just before he can stop himself. “I – I have plenty of room.”

His voice doesn’t quite break, but it’s less certain than it’s been in years. Jim scrutinizes him with sympathetic eyes for a long moment and eventually shakes his head.

“Sorry, Bruce,” he says. “You know that’s not how it works.”

“Isn’t it?” Bruce asks, and it’s challenging in a way Bruce hasn’t directly been in a long time. Since his return, he’s mellowed, mostly. He doesn’t rush down to the precinct to offer his help – demand Jim let him – anymore. He doesn’t bother trying to make a case before he acts, doesn’t make moves in the open instead of cloaked in darkness and protected by a mask. Now, though, he speaks with the recalcitrance of the teenage rebel that hadn’t quite found his cause, and it feels _right._ That old role, still so easy to step back into, belongs to him, _is_ him, even after all this time. “You and I both know that historically hasn’t been the case.”

“We’ve been making the city better,” Jim insists. “You know that. And that means there have to be some ground rules that we have to stick to. I know it may not seem like it now, but it’ll keep the kids safer, in the long run.”

“Better,” Bruce repeats, and he looks to where Dick is seated, alone and drowning in Bruce’s coat. “Doesn’t much seem like it."

* * *

_Two gunshots, ringing in his ears._

_The snap of ropes he couldn’t possibly have actually heard._

_Four broken corpses._

He hurls the Batarang at the wall, not even looking up to see where it flies, until a familiar voice yelps, “Watch it!”

Bruce lowers his arm to his side. Looks up.

“Selina,” he says. “Hey.”

Confusion creases her brow.

“Hey?” she echoes as she slinks closer. “Not going to ask where I was or why I didn’t come?”

“I’m used to you not showing up places, Selina,” he says. “As long as no one died, I’m not going to question you. I have bigger concerns right now.”

“Such as?”

“If you’d come, you’d know.”

He hadn’t intended it to come out so reproachful. But the night had been anything but a good one, and he doesn’t have the time for this. So curt and harsh to the closest friend he’s ever had it is – anything that’ll let him get back to work. Once upon a time, that would have made Selina flare up in annoyance; bristle at the perceived passive aggression; snap back at him and storm away, not returning for weeks. Now, she just sighs, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. “Right. Of course.”

There’s a brief pause before she blurts out, “How’s the kid?”

_Of course._

Selina Kyle, maybe not where she’d said she’d be, but never too far away. Because heaven forbid they ever go anywhere together like normal people, she’d probably been perched up somewhere high, somewhere she could see both the show and him. Somewhere, later, she could see him talking to Dick.

Just like she had been all those years ago.

Him and her, the sole witnesses to both of those double murders, separated by fifteen years, one hundred and sixty million seconds.

Almost every tragedy, every major hurt, in his life, she’s been there. For the triumphs, too. He’d been disappointed that she hadn’t showed up tonight. Now he wishes that had been the case after all.

“How do you think?”

Selina rolls her eyes at him half-heartedly. He pinches the bridge of his nose and relents. “Worse than me. I got to come home after. He’s in juvie for the night, until they can find him a place in a group home or foster care.”

Selina hisses – not in surprise, but in a familiar displeasure. “He’s nine. They won’t.”

An image flashes before his eyes – _street kids, clad in clean new clothes bought with Wayne money, looking miserable as they were carted onto buses to be sent juvie upstate_. It’s an effort to blink away the memory.

He’d seen those children through a television screen, not in person, and it had been so soon after his parents that he’d barely had any attention to spare for anyone else. He hadn’t even met Selina, yet. It hadn’t been until later that he’d learned any more of the details.

It’s usually him that gets lost in the past, the future, caught up in memories and searching for signs. Selina lives in the moment, too focused on the present to look back on old tragedies. So it had been a surprise when she’d told him about that day once, idly playing with his hair as they curled up against each other on the couch, a peaceful stolen moment after reunification, a few short days before he’d left. The surprise had quickly shifted to something more like horror as she’d kept talking.

The clothes…he hadn’t thought about them until Selina had brought up the bus ride. Just a child’s fleeting thought that he could make things better for someone. It hadn’t made anything better. The other children were still herded onto a bus to be sent to somewhere more convenient.

Is that what will be happening to the boy who’s just lost his parents? Who’s just been pulled away from the only family he has left? Pulled away from a pair of corpses to be packed up and sent somewhere he knows no one?

“Be that as it may,” he says at last. “He at least deserves to see whoever did it brought to justice. I’m trying to find who that was. Care to join me?”

Selina nods. It’s a slow nod, but very definite, and when she smiles, it’s sharp edged and so familiar that any time other than this one, he’d ache to see it. _I’m going to be there whenever you need me._ “You know it.”

 _Come with me,_ he’d wanted to say to her then, young and recklessly in love. _There’s nothing left for us here._

 _Come with me,_ he’d wanted to plead. _Haven’t we bled enough for this city?_

 _Come with me,_ he’d wanted to argue. _We can see the world and never look back._

But she hadn’t come with him and he _had_ looked back, and come back, and when all was said and done, he’d bled even more. He isn’t a good man, not like he’d wanted to be, but he can be this good at least.

He reaches for the cowl.

“Bruce, wait.”

He looks back up at Selina. She surges forward and clamps her arms around him.

Selina is tiny – so much so that it’s sometimes a shock to remember that she was taller than him when they met – but her arms are strong, and she holds him so tightly that for the first time since the snap of the ropes four hours earlier, the haze of screaming children and bloody streets and gunshots echoing in the night that’s clouding his mind eases just enough.

This is here. This is now.

He lowers his head into the crook of Selina’s neck to breathe her in and presses a hand into her back, allowing himself to stay in her arms until the count of four. This is Selina. His best friend. He could shake apart now and she’d still look at him without pity, hold him until he can breathe. But he _can’t._ Not now.

He lets her go.

She tilts her head and looks up at him with those green eyes he’d once loved – but no, that’s wrong. No matter how much time passes, or how much they spend apart, a part of him has always and will always love Selina Kyle. How could he not? She was the first person to make him smile, after, the person who’d been there for him no matter what and came to know him better than he knew himself, the one to understand what he needed and when. She’d bumped his shoulder and held his hand, given him gentle kisses and desperate hugs.

Who does Dick Grayson have to hug him?

Bruce had had Alfred. It hadn’t been long until he’d had Selina, too. Dick…has just lost his parents and his whole circus family in one night. The thought is nearly enough to make him grab onto Selina once more and never let go.

Nearly.

“So,” Selina says. Her voice is a little hoarse. It sounds like home. “Shall we go?”

Bruce nods. “Selina…”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t help everyone,” he says. It comes out plaintive. Part of him wonders if he should wish it hadn’t; the rest wouldn’t claw the words back if he could. “You taught me that.”

Selina smiles and it’s small and so soft, he can imagine her hands cupping his face as she tells him to breathe.

“No,” she agrees. “But you can help this one. _You_ taught _me_ that.”

Bruce doesn’t quite smile. But he takes her hand and intertwines their fingers and _breathes._ “Okay. Then let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> I may or may not have started writing this halfway through season five airing, then forgotten about it until now.


End file.
